


Rain

by phanburnhamizzard



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), dan and phil
Genre: Angst, Cuddle, Depression, Domestic, Gen, M/M, Make Up, fight, phandomreversebang2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:25:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14606142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phanburnhamizzard/pseuds/phanburnhamizzard
Summary: It's a cold day with ominous purple clouds in the sky when Daniel Howell bolts out of his apartment and heads downtown.  Phil Lester is left in their apartment alone, stunned, in the aftermath of their argument.Separated from one another, they think back on their relationship, Dan's depression, and what their friendship really means to them.Then, it starts to rain...





	Rain

**Author's Note:**

> https://thebabiesarentokay.tumblr.com/image/173613758224
> 
> This is the amazing artwork that was the inspiration for this story! Done by Lee!

The white pavement was already being painted with a splattering of brown spots from the freezing rain as the young man slid down the wall and sat down heavily on to its rough surface. The single tear that ran down his face could have been easily mistaken for just another raindrop, but for Dan, it was the release of emotion he could hold in no longer. 

He shivered in the cold and wrapped his chest with his arms to protect his body from the whipping wind that was blustering down the walkway. In some ways, he enjoyed the discomfort, hoping it would numb his mind as well as his body. 

The restaurant behind him was filled with seemingly happy people, and he could hear the tones of their enthusiastic conversations through the window. They were warm and dry, eating hot food, and basking in the presence of their friends and loved ones. 

Loneliness, with its deep and aching throb of pain, filled Dan’s soul as he heard a young woman burst out into laughter on the other side of the wall merely inches away from him. The clatter of silverware on plates and the clear ringing tone of glasses tinkling in toasts echoed in his heart and filled it with sorrow. 

Dan was wearing all black, but the thin fabric did nothing to keep him warm. He knew he should get himself out of the rain and find some shelter. He knew his body, already numb at the nose and fingers, needed to warm itself. He also knew, though, that he could not go home. Not now. Not with what had just happened there. 

A taxi blurred past him and its rear wheel splashed a small puddle up and onto the sidewalk, landing an inch from his his shoes. He looked around his folded knees and saw the reflected lights dancing in the newly formed pool of water. The yellows and golds from the signs above shone brightly and mesmerized him, allowing his mind to ease into a state of numbness for the first time that day. 

The fight had really started over nothing. It was the underlying tension between the two young men that had escalated the bickering into a full on shouting match. Phil, Dan’s roommate, had been editing the latest “Dan and Phil Gamesl” video and had asked Dan to give it a watch before making the final annotations to prepare it for upload. Dan, feeling down, had watched with little enthusiasm and only mumbled a few suggestions on edits that Phil quickly declined to make. 

“Why ask me then, mate,” Dan had grumbled, “if you aren’t going to listen to me?”

“I like how you come off in the video, and all of your suggestions were cutting what I think are the best parts of your performance, Dan,” Phil explained.

“Performance? Is that what we’re calling it now?” Dan barked suddenly, his eyes narrowing defensively.

“What are you on about, Dan?” 

“Nothing,” Dan said, rolling his eyes and quickly standing up from the chair. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What’s wrong?” Phil asked.

“I said ‘Nothing’,” Dan snapped as he quickly walked out of the room.

By now, after years of living together, Phil was used to Dan’s sudden mood shifts and decided to let the conversation go without following up. Often, Dan just needed time and space to work himself out of his mood, and although it was hard for Phil to see Dan in pain, he had learned long ago that interfering only made Dan’s pain worse. So, he turned back to the computer and began the process of adding the end cards. 

Back in his room, though, Dan was beginning to fume. How could his best friend want to show him in such a bad light? How could Phil, of all people, not see that he had been giving it a hundred percent in the video, but had not pulled it off? The “phans” would notice and then the badgering would start. The messages would come in on Tumblr, on Twitter, and to his public email. The YouTube comments, always less kind, would then bombard him. 

What was wrong with Dan?!

You can totally see he isn’t into it?

Did you see his frown at the end of the video? Why is he faking it?

If he doesn't want to be there, he should just stop making videos. I don’t respect people who aren’t authentic. 

Dan collapsed onto his bed, prone, and closed his eyes. All of his years of being a theater kid came back to him. Of all the words he hated, “performance” was the main, because being authentic to himself in real life and online, was so critically important to him. As he took some deep breaths, he realized Phil hadn’t meant his comment that way, and of course, he would apologize to Phil later, but for now, he stewed in the knowledge that this new video would go up and clearly show him “acting”. 

The “phans” knew Dan and Phil were exaggerating their personalities, but that in truth, they were seeing the real men. That realness was one of the reasons they had become so popular. That willingness to only hide the smallest parts of themselves was why their audience loved and respected them to the level that they did. This new video, though, would show -- at least Dan thought it would -- that Dan had indeed been “performing” that day. What a shitstorn that would start.

With the video exporting to YouTube, Phil went downstairs and began fixing dinner for the two of them. He made a vegetable stir fry and called Dan down when it was ready.

Dan came down stairs and avoided looking Phil in the eye. They took their plates to the couch and watched an anime in silence as they ate. 

Phil, against his better judgement, but with nothing but the best of intentions, asked, softly, “Hey, Dan.”

“What?” Dan answered, flatly.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Am I feeling better?!” Dan snapped back. “What does that mean?”

“I’m just worried about you today, that’s all,” Phil said gently.

“Oh, so now you’re worried, yeah? What about that shit video “performance” you’re uploading right now? You weren’t worried about that now, were you?”

“Ok, what is going on?” Phil demanded, putting his plate down and turning to face Dan on the couch. 

“What the hell do you think is going on?” Dan barked back, not looking at Phil, “I’m going to have to eat shit for weeks because of that video and you know it. It’s all about you looking good and you couldn’t care less what happens to me.”

Hurt, Phil raised his voice, “That’s a load of crap and you know it! If you don’t like the video, we always change it. But you looked fine in this one. You’re just being…” Phil trailed off, not wanting to finish.

“Being what, Phil?!” Dan shouted. “Being what?!”

Phil stood up, “Alright. You’re feeling sorry for yourself and over analyzing everything. You don’t trust me to edit anymore. You think I don’t notice how all the zooming in and close-ups of me when you edit? You think the fans don’t notice? You’ve taken this … this whatever mood you’ve been in lately and you’re letting it affect your work. Why sit there in front of a camera if you don’t want anyone to see you?”

“My mood?” Dan asked, his voice suddenly dangerously quiet. 

“You know what I mean…” Phil began.

“No, I don’t,” Dan said slowly and methodically. “Tell me, Dr. Lester, about my ‘mood’”. 

Phil could sense the impending explosion and tried to diffuse the situation. “Look, Dan, that’s not what I meant. I used the wrong words. It’s just that, when you are down, you …”

“Down?!” Dan blasted back as he bolted off of the couch to face Phil. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! You’ve never understood me. You’ve never known what it’s like to feel one way and act another. You’ve never known how it feels to live a lie: to put on a glowing face and a stupid smile and make another goddamn video when inside, all you want to do is die. No, you just skip along in your privileged life and make happy videos as a happy person and have no idea what anyone else is going through!”

“That’s not fair. That’s not true. I’m not happy all the time. When Rick died, I….”

“Oh bloody boo-hoo, Phil. You had one crises in your entire life. One episode of pain and you think that that makes you understand how I hurt inside every goddamn day?”

Phil gritted his teeth and breathed quickly through his nose. 

“Don’t talk to me like that.” he said, quietly.

“I can talk to you however I want!” Dan yelled, “And for once, I’m going to have the last words and those words aren’t going to be ‘Ooo, I’m sorry, Phil’.”

They stood in silence, staring at each other for a full minute. Phil wanted to slap Dan across the face. He also wanted to hug him, for he could see the pain his friend was in. He was not good at dealing with ‘angry Dan’, and frankly, he was tired of trying. Ever since Dan had decided to take himself off of his medications, he had been having more and more outbursts. Phil felt the words starting to come out of his mouth before he could stop them. 

“Maybe if you went back on your medicine, Dan, you would…”

“FUCK YOU!” Dan roared. “Fuck you and the high horse you rode in on! You have no idea what I’m feeling, no idea what I’m going through, and all you want is to placate me. You want to bury me under a haze of chemicals so you can do whatever you want!”

“That is not true!” Phil yelled back, “I’m tired of being yelled at! I’m tired of trying to help you when you won’t let me help. I’m tired of your mood swings and your hypersensitivity to everything I say! I can’t live like this!” 

Tears flooded the bottom of Dan’s vision. His lips tightened and his muscles stiffened. His heart was beating so loudly in his chest that he thought it might explode. Had he really just heard what he thought he heard? Fine then. So be it. 

He put on his most ridiculous British accent and took a low bow, “Sorry to trouble you then, mate! I’ll be a-goin’ straight-away.”

He stood up too quickly, feeling dizzy, and stumbled for the front door. 

“Dan!” Phil yelled after him, “Don’t go like this!”

But it was too late. Dan had grabbed his keys and was already out the front door. He closed it with a slam. 

And the apartment was quiet. 

 

The rain had grown from a drizzle to a downpour, and the awning covering Dan was now splashing him with run off. He did not move. The shivering had stopped and now, he just felt numb. 

Phil had never understood Dan’s depression. Never having felt it himself, he had tried hard to empathize, but he had always tried to soothe Dan with useless platitudes. Of course, Dan had understood that Phil was trying to help, and had appreciated the effort, but over time, these seemingly meaningless words began to get under his skin. 

“It’s not that I don’t think you’re trying to help me, Phil,” he had gently explained when he was newly diagnosed, “it is just that what you’re doing isn’t working, mate.” 

So Phil had gone to therapy with him. Every other week, Phil had gone along and sat attentively as the therapist educated him on how to help and on what Dan was experiencing. 

It was nice of him to have done that, Dan thought as he wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them closer to his chest. Phil was a nice person. There was no doubt about that. It’s just that he was so clueless sometimes. He was always off in his own little world of weirdness: of imagination and creativity and whatever else was floating in his mind. To try to come down to my level, Dan thought, was really asking too much of Phil. I’m going to have to apologize, he thought. Again. Dammit. 

 

Back at the apartment, Phil had cleaned the dinner dishes and put them away, leaving the cabinet doors open as his mind drifted elsewhere. He was going to have to apologize, he realized. He shouldn’t have mentioned the medication: it was none of his business and he was not a doctor. And he shouldn’t have yelled, especially not when Dan was in one of his down moods. The therapist had explained to Phil that depression was a broken thought process, and that it took the person dealing with it a lot of strength to fight those broken thoughts. The last thing they needed was an argument or a challenge when they were already expending so much energy in fighting. 

Phil plopped down on the couch and watched another anime. One he had already seen with Dan. He didn’t want to watch the new one without him. His mind wandered and he found himself gazing out the window at the rain. The droplets cascaded down the window and sometimes joined into a bigger drop that moved faster, collecting smaller drops along the way, before finally disappearing into the small pool at the bottom of the windowsill. Phil watched the drops with his head slightly tilted, his eyes narrowed and his breathing slowing. 

 

“They should really do something about these beggars,” Dan heard someone say in the above him. The clicking of the woman’s heels had grown faint before he realized she had been talking about him. 

 

The thunder brought Phil’s attention back to the storm outside the window. He heard the rain pounding on the roof the of the apartment and thought of Dan out walking in this storm. Surely, he’d be at a Starbucks by now, anyway. Surely. 

 

Dan slowly exhaled out of his mouth and saw his breath. He wondered what time it was. He wondered what the temperature was. It had definitely fallen in the past couple of hours, that much was certain. His back was aching, and his knees felt as if they were permanently flexed up against his chest. The weight of the water on his clothes pulling him down into the sidewalk was nothing compared to the weight of the depression pulling him down into himself. He felt, more than thought, that if he just remained still, the pain could no longer hurt him. So he sat. And the time ticked by.

 

Phil got up from the couch and wandered around the apartment. He hated being alone in the big space. He hated the echoing of his footsteps. He saw the tiny plushies holding hands and stopped in his tracks. He felt his heart begin to break. 

 

Dan was remembering the first time he had seen Phil online. He had been drawn to the silly boy with the amazing blue eyes and the vivid imagination because he seemed so happy. He felt as if this boy had everything he wanted: people that cared for him, the money and time to film videos, people who enjoyed watching him, and most of all, a weird kind of contentedness that he longed for in his own life. He instantly wanted to be this boy’s friend. He really wanted to meet him. But he had no idea how to make that happen. 

 

Phil held the plushies side by side and remembered the first time he saw Dan in real life. The train station was full of people and he had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to find him. That had been foolish, because all 6’ 3” of Dan is never hard to find. Dan had stepped off the train and put his hand up to his forehead to shield his eyes from the bright lights above. As he had scanned the crowd, a smile had crept onto Phil’s face. The young boy was striking: tall, thin, a bit too tan, with long straightened hair covering one eye and a backpack hung precariously over one shoulder. He had looked nervous, Phil remembered, as if he were afraid no one would be there to meet him. Then, their eyes had met and the anxiety left his face and the worry melted into a smile. Those brown eyes never left Phil’s as he wove in and out of the moving throng of people until he finally stopped two feet away from Phil. 

“Hi!” Dan enthused with a giggle and a smile.

“Hi!” Phil had replied, and then suddenly, he had found himself dropping his own backpack and wrapping Dan in a bear hug. 

Neither had cared that a few people were staring. Neither had noticed that Phil’s bag was unattended on the busy floor as they rocked side to side. For both of them, the rest of the station had disappeared and they were the only people in the world. 

Finally, Phil had remembered his backpack and as he clumsily broke the hug and started searching through the messy bag for Dan’s gift -- a small stuffed bear -- he had been able to wipe the tears from his eyes without Dan noticing. As he had held up the bear for Dan, Dan had laughed, had taken it and had given it a bear hug, which had made both of them break down in laughter. 

Phil, without realizing it, had turned the plushies so that they faced each other. As he focus came back to the reality in front of him, he raised an eyebrow and then dropped his own likeness to the floor as he embraced the Dan plushie tightly to his chest. 

 

Dan replayed the fight in his mind again and shook his head. The window behind him was steaming up from sharp drop in temperature outside. He thought of going back to University and graduating with his law degree. He told himself that involving his brain in something so challenging would be a way to make it focus on something other than self-destruction. His depression had been one of the main causes of his dropping out of University years ago, though, and deep down, he knew that adding more strain would not be the best answer to his current problem. ‘Then what is the answer?’ he said, quite out loud to no one. ‘I can’t keep hurting like this. I can’t keep feeling this pain. I can’t win this all alone.’

The rain suddenly stopped hitting his head even though his feet were still getting soaked. There was a shadow barely visible through his teary eyes, and its caster stood slightly to his right. He turned his head and saw white tennis shoes with sloppily tied laces. As his eyes travelled upward, he made out dark jeans and then a blue shirt with black dots covered with a purple jacket, and then a long arm holding an umbrella out awkwardly over Dan’s head. 

Phil’s raven hair immediately fell into his face as the freezing rain attacked it, but he didn’t move the umbrella back to cover himself. 

Neither said a word for a very long two minutes. Phil’s breath slowed as his heart recovered from jogging in the cold, searching for his best friend in all their favorite places. 

Dan slowly raced a water soaked sleeve and used it to wipe his eyes. Then he sniffed, and placed his arms on the ground and began to push himself up. His feet slid in the growing puddle, and he landed back on the wet sidewalk roughly. 

Phil reached down with his left arm and offered Dan his hand. He accept it and tried again to stand, but his numb fingers were no good for grasping and he slipped and fell back down once again. 

For Dan, this all had a significance: a painful false truth that he was helpless and incapable of receiving help. He folded his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his hands. 

Without saying a word, Phil lowered himself down onto the wet sidewalk and put his left arm around Dan’s shoulders, pulling him close. The umbrella covered them both now, and Dan nuzzled his head into Phil’s chest, feeling his friend’s warmth. Phil felt Dan’s weak sobs and pulled him in even closer. The sun was fully set now and the streetlights twinkled against the purple sky. 

These were problems with no answers. These were issues with no obvious solutions. There was not going to be an easy fix for Dan and it was not up to Phil to find one, even if it existed. Depression was a complex illness and it caused pain to everyone it touched. Month after month and year after year, it spouted the same lies: spinning its false logic into a series of seemingly unconquerable “truths”. 

There would be more therapy. There might or might not be more medication in the future. The rain would pass eventually and the seasons would change. There would be worse days and better days in Dan’s future. That’s the nature of a chronic illness. There is no cure: only survival. 

These are the things Phil knew and that he wanted to say to Dan; but, Phil knew Dan already knew these things to be true. Phil knew that sometimes, wise words were not the best solution. 

Phil leaned down and gently kissed the top of Dan’s head. 

“I’ve started a pot of noodles on the stove,” he said gently, “and if we leave now, it will probably be ready once we get home.”

Dan sniffed, “Okay.” 

Phil stood, then put the umbrella down and helped Dan up with both arms supporting under his shoulders. He picked up the umbrella, dumped out the rain it had so quickly collected, then pulled Dan close and covered them both from the downpour as they walked towards home.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a project for the PhandomReverseBang 2018. Please leave a comment if you read this as it would mean the world to me to hear from you! Thank you so much for reading and have a great day! :) . 
> 
> Thanks to Lee, for the amazing drawing that inspired the story, and to Courtney, the amazing beta who fixed all the broken things!


End file.
